Indian Investigator Comes On The Scene Of Murder At Opera

September 2, 1991|By OLINE H. COGDILL, Staff Writer

FALSE NOTES. By C.Q. Yarbro. Jove. $3.95.

When a French tenor dies on stage during a performance, the opera backers are more worried about how their band of international singers will handle the murder investigation than about catching the killer.

The tenor was the most hated man ever to sing a note in the San Francisco Opera House -- a blackmailer, manipulator and general sleaze. He also wasn`t a very good singer. His is no great loss to the company.

But bad publicity could be a great loss. So attorney Charlie Spotted Moon is called in to help the singers deal with American investigators and, it is hoped, find the real killer.

Moon is an Ojibwa Indian who continually negotiates between his Indian ways and modern ways.

He is a caring man whose experiences with discrimination make him sensitive to the discrimination others experience. More important, his sensitivities propel him into action, buffered by logic, Indian lore and a high sense of duty.

Moon is as much concerned about the high-profile case of the opera company as he is about a poor, frightened woman divorcing her abusive, possibly murderous, husband.

-- AT EASE WITH THE DEAD. By Walter Satterthwait. Worldwide. $3.50.

Santa Fe private detective Joshua Croft`s effort to find the lost remains of a Navajo leader and return them to their proper burial site is an absorbing, taut story filled with adultery, power and Indian lore.

Croft works for the Mondragon Agency, owned by Rita Mondragon, who was crippled in a shooting that also killed her husband. She never leaves her home high above the city and, with her computer and intense investigative skills, she acts like a female Nero Wolfe.

Croft is a fascinating, complex character. He is in love with Rita, who won`t return his affections until she can leave her wheelchair. Sensitive and insightful, Croft constantly battles his violent side, which only arises when he or someone he cares about are threatened.

In the search for the lost bones, which mysteriously disappeared more than 60 years ago, Croft stumbles upon a legacy of greed that leads to murder.

Satterthwait`s writing is crisp and tight. His descriptions of the Southwest and New Mexico are breathtaking. But his descriptions of his characters are even more intriguing.

-- BODY AND SOUL. By Ralph McInerny. Worldwide. $3.50

Pauline and Hal Stanfeld are the kind of people you hate to meet in the street, let alone invite to a party. Bickering, hateful, viperish, they can turn a simple golf outing into a duel to the death, a get-together into a slugfest.

After 30 years of wedded misery, the Stanfelds -- the most wealthy and vocal couple in Wyer, Ind. -- decide to call it quits. At least Pauline does, especially after Hal has the bad manners to hit her in the country club in front of everyone. All she did was be rude to Hal`s girlfriend, a waitress at the club. Hal would love to be rid of Pauline, but he doesn`t want his financial and extramarital dirty laundry aired.

When Hal is found bludgeoned to death in his kitchen, all clues point to Pauline, who was upstairs at the time, but didn`t hear any noise. Enter Andrew Broom, the town`s best attorney and one of its few sane citizens. Andrew doesn`t know whether to believe Pauline.

Body and Soul isn`t so much a who-dun-it as much as a we-know-who-dun-it. The killer is revealed from the first chapter, taking away all of the suspense.

McInerny is the author of the Father Dowling novels, a series with a popularity I have never understood. Like that series, Body and Soul offers light mystery with little depth.

Oline H. Cogdill, a copy editor on the features desk, is a longtime fan of mysteries and the characters who inhabit them.